


Farewell

by sceal



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Humor, Background Het, Beverly Katz is the Best, Female Character of Color, Gen, Hannibal is Hannibal, Male-Female Friendship, Minor Alana Bloom/Hannibal Lecter, Minor Character Death, Off-screen cannibalism, POV Female Character, Romantic Friendship, Someone Help Will Graham, background Will Graham/Margot Verger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-22 01:09:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1570397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sceal/pseuds/sceal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Will’s stay at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Beverly could picture him all too well sneaking into the museum after hours with carefully selected body parts concealed on his person.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Farewell

“Well that was creepy,” Beverly said once Hannibal had left the museum.

Will didn’t have the grace to look embarrassed, only sending her a speaking glance begging her to shut her mouth.

Oh Will Graham, how little you know women.

“I can’t bring him up when we’re alone?” Beverly said. “But the two of you can tease out the intricacies of your latest arts and craft project,” Beverly waved a hand to encompass all the gory, strategic bits of Randal Tier’s corpse impaled on the saber-toothed cat’s skeleton, “in front of everyone?”

“You shouldn’t even think his name,” Will said, so earnest and pretty. “And we’re quite obviously not alone.”

Jimmy and Brian were by the display of the severed cadaver.  Her boys were pretty stoked that they’d get to bring the cat skeleton back to the lab as evidence, Jimmy joking that he hoped the next Chesapeake Ripper murder was in a lingerie boutique.  Crawford stood a little in retreat, every inch of him their usual grim overlord.

Will’s gaze met hers in a rare blink of eye contact. That had to mean something bad.

Beverly swallowed, her stomach plummeting sharply.  “Does he suspect anything?”

“Not here,” Will said, leaving her side to approach his oeuvre d’art.  After Will’s stay at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Beverly could picture him all too well sneaking into the museum after hours with carefully selected body parts concealed on his person.

Will kept telling her that he was only playing Hannibal’s game to lull him into a false sense of security.  That as soon as they found a workable scrap of evidence they’d shove him behind bars for eternity and a half.  Where he’d rot until the meat of his grotesque, bloated body wouldn’t even tempt his own bloodthirsty appetite. 

Deferring to Will’s more intimate knowledge of their resident cannibal had seemed like common sense.  Yet with each day Will spent locked in Hannibal’s office allowing that monster to dig around in his brain, attending the creep’s dinner parties and swallowing down pieces of long pig, all the while counselling her to turn a blind eye, Beverly lost more hours of sleep. 

She stayed up at night jumping at shadows and fantasizing about destroying Hannibal Lecter even if she had to talk to the sleazy crime blogger Freddie Lounds to do it.  Any more of this and she would break, just crack open. Hannibal wouldn’t even have to touch her.

There was a sadistic brilliance to every one of Lecter’s moves that made her feel like Will was right where Hannibal wanted him.

And damned if she’d allow that to happen.  She refused to let Will down again.

Beverly walked up to the scruffy dreamboat whose gift it was to empathize with psychopaths.  She reached for his arm.

He turned to her with a cautionary glance.

“I don’t know how,” Beverly said, “I don’t know when. But we’ll catch him.”

*

 

Beverly walked into Will’s office to find it empty but for one unwelcome guest. Alana Bloom glanced up at her with surprise. 

“I was just dropping off a file,” Beverly raised the dossier like a barrier, pitying this woman.  She wanted to scream at her to run away from her boyfriend.

“That’s a lovely shirt,” Alana said, her own outfit professional yet accentuating a fragile femininity.  There were deep circles beneath her eyes. She was probably here to assess if Will continued to harbour murderous impulses towards her lover.

“Thanks,” Beverly said, taken aback when Alana reached out as if to touch it.

“Sorry,” Alana said, halting her movement, her eyes stricken. “You have a few stray dog hairs.”

“Oh,” Beverly quickly brushed them off. Stupid cuddly Winston. “No it’s my cat. She sheds like crazy.”

“I must bow down to the authority of the fibre specialist,” Alana said, her continued shell-shocked expression indicating that she’d do no such thing.  Will would be pissed. Couldn’t a guy and a girl just hang out, touch each other’s pets, without anyone making a big deal about it?

“Speaking of,” Beverly said. “I have to get back to the lab. See you around?”

“Of course,” Alana said, looking as if she were dying to say more.

Beverly tucked tail and fled before Alana could invite her over for the double date from hell.

*

 

Beverly knew what to expect by Crawford’s phone call.  She protected herself in a shell of numbness and worked the scene like any other crime.  If not for the face and the hands this could be anyone.  But it was Jimmy.

Jimmy sliced into pieces, cut vertically from head to toe.  Will telling them the ripper wanted to treat Jimmy like Jimmy did a crime scene, so you’d discover him layer by layer.

That afternoon Beverly cornered Will in the lab the second it was empty. “Was it you?”

Will shook his head.

Beverly crossed her arms.  She wanted to believe him. “Why did he do it?”

“The ripper,” Will said pointedly, as if she’d be stupid enough to bring up Hannibal’s name today of all days, with her fellow FBI crime scene investigator splayed out across several different body trays, “is toying with us.”

Beverly waited but Will had no more insights to offer.

“That’s it?” she said.

“I’m sorry.  For your loss.  You knew Jimmy better than I did.”

Beverly took a deep breath. “Do you think Dr. Lecter will come to the funeral?” What she meant was _don’t let him come_.

“Yes. He’s my psychiatrist.  He goes where I go.” Will hadn’t gotten it.  And Beverly couldn’t in good conscience make herself ask again. 

But the day of the funeral Will texted her: _Emergency session with Dr. Lecter.  Give my sympathies to Jimmy’s family._

And Beverly sat through the service worrying what the two men were up to.

*

 

Will was coming unhinged again. Instead of blackouts and sleepwalking, Will’s current descent into madness manifested itself in expensive, tailored coats and grocery hauls full of organic fruit and vegetables, all of it carefully orchestrated to make himself Hannibal’s mirror image.

In a way Will was still locked in the asylum’s cage, the one she’d been afraid to get close to.  There was a hesitancy to them that she’d prided herself on never having.  Before, she’d been the only person on the team who treated him like a co-worker instead of an instrument or a freak. 

The new distance was completely her fault.  It’s what you got for believing your friend was a serial killer.  That kind of thing wasn’t exactly easy to forgive, though Will was making an admirable effort.

It was dangerous for them to meet up, even or maybe especially at Will’s secluded farmhouse.  She’d shown up one night, the noise of her apartment building not enough to keep her monsters at bay.  She’d brought microwavable popcorn and a case of beer.

Every time he surprised her by letting her in. He’d been particularly moody tonight, withdrawn.

 “I um…” Will stared at his empty fireplace.

Beverly nibbled on a BBQ chip, refusing to give up before the bag was empty even though she was full. “Okay I’ll go first. Last night I went down to the bar, it was live music, 90s classics.  I may or may not have picked up a divorce attorney.”

“Margot came back,” Will said, a tinge of blush to his cheeks, briefly meeting her gaze. “Last night.”

“Nice! Will, my man, I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“She’s a lesbian.”

“Oh-Sorry, it’s just, you blushed, so I thought-“

“No, we had sex.”

Beverly frowned, glancing out the window. “You think Hannibal set her up to it?”

“I don’t know.”

Beverly sighed. “Well I have no advice to give. Just, be careful?”

Will nodded.  “Speaking of. We have to stop this.”

“This what?” she said.

“You, coming to my house. Us talking like this.  We have to stop.”

She hid her surprise, worried it might look like something else. “Do we?”

“Hannibal asked me about you today.  I think because of that time you ran into Alana in my office.  She’s hinted at things during our dinners.”

“My suspecting him of cannibalism type things?”

“No. What, to an outsider, looks like a romantic entanglement.”

Beverly would ponder the phrasing of that sentence later. “But you just slept with Margot! You’re both his patients, surely one of you can bring it up in therapy.  Not that I’m implying it was traumatic.” Though she kind of was.

Will smiled. “Our encounter would look suspicious if you kept coming over.”

Beverly froze. “Did you sleep with her to throw him off my scent?”

Will shrugged. “It was part of my motivation.”

“Right,” Beverly said.  “That would be my cue to leave.”

“No, Beverly wait,” Will said. “It’s best if we don’t talk too much even at work.  For a while.”

Beverly digested this. “Well since I probably won’t have this opportunity again… I’m starting to think you never intend to catch him.  I worry about you.”

“You worry I’m turning into a killer?”

Beverly nodded. “Either that or a corpse.  I don’t want you in a cage.”

“Again.”

“Yeah.  Will, I’m thinking about quitting.”

Will nodded. “That’s smart.”

“But not just because of Hannibal, and the stress, because of you.  I can’t- I won’t die.  I want to be your friend but I think you want to be Hannibal’s more.  And when the stakes are this high I need to have a little self-preservation.”

“Yes,” Will said, his expression off, somehow.

“But if you decide you want my help to lock him up instead of buying my silence with food and booze and your sweet company, you have it. If you arrest him? I’ll come back.”

“I’ll arrest him,” Will said, and it hurt that he was lying to her.

She didn’t know if she was doing the right thing.  But she wouldn’t stay here and die for Will Graham.  She had sisters, dreams, places she wanted to go, songs she wanted to learn, boys she wanted to meet.  None of that would happen here.  And she couldn’t stay and do nothing while Will let Hannibal kill and emotionally eviscerate everyone on her team. 

But catching Hannibal meant incriminating Will.  That’s what it came down to and it was the reason why she’d deny Jimmy’s family justice. 

On a whim Beverly walked up to Will and hugged him.  He was rigid for maybe a second before his arms crushed her against him.

“I kind of hate you right now,” Beverly whispered, her cheek against his scruffy jaw.

“I kind of hate me too,” Will said.

“I’m sorry,” Beverly said. “For everything.”

“I know,” Will said.

Beverly let go.  She said goodbye to the dogs and walked out of the farmhouse for the last time.


End file.
